Facebook cryptocurrency?

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I don't know much about cryptocurrency but I do know it's a bad time for FB to make any long term plans, given how deeply they are implicated in the brexit/trump/russia/cambridge analytica mess. It's an especially bad look given that cryptocurrency seems to also be a tool for money launderers. I suspect FB won't even exist 5 years from now.

Facebook is rumored to be developing its own cryptocurrency. Obviously there are no details yet. But I kind of feel like the description of buying into it and having credits to use on Facebook, or getting paid with Facebook credits, is not exactly a cryptocurrency? What is the difference between a cryptocurrency and just say... Buying a gift card? Putting money on your Starbucks account that you use to pay at the store? Or getting paid in Amazon credits for your Amazon affiliates account?

The only confirmation Facebook would give is that it's developed a blockchain team.. but blockchain is not just for cryptocurrency any more...

Anyway this is super off-topic but this is the only place I come to regularly that I can imagine posting about this and having an intelligent conversation haha.

Facebook is rumored to be developing its own cryptocurrency. Obviously there are no details yet. But I kind of feel like the description of buying into it and having credits to use on Facebook, or getting paid with Facebook credits, is not exactly a cryptocurrency? What is the difference between a cryptocurrency and just say... Buying a gift card? Putting money on your Starbucks account that you use to pay at the store? Or getting paid in Amazon credits for your Amazon affiliates account?

The only confirmation Facebook would give is that it's developed a blockchain team.. but blockchain is not just for cryptocurrency any more...

Anyway this is super off-topic but this is the only place I come to regularly that I can imagine posting about this and having an intelligent conversation haha.

I don’t know that would qualify as a crypto currency, is it intended to pay for things through Facebook or to actually pay people?

It sounds more more like an electronic version of Canadian tire money, if you’re not familiar with that look it up, it’s pretty cool, it started as a scrip for Canadian Tire stores but some people actually trade them as a medium of exchange.

I mean as as long as it has value and people want to trade it and agree it has value. it can become a currency. I certainly wouldn’t buy it as an investment. However when some of my friends in libertarian circles were big into bitcoin 7 years ago and I scoffed it and never got any I sure missed out

I don't know much about cryptocurrency but I do know it's a bad time for FB to make any long term plans, given how deeply they are implicated in the brexit/trump/russia/cambridge analytica mess. It's an especially bad look given that cryptocurrency seems to also be a tool for money launderers. I suspect FB won't even exist 5 years from now.

Meh, Facebook is the new Goldman Sachs/Citi Group. The public will hate on them for a while (without really understanding the reasons beyond media soundbites) and then they will move on to hating some other industry during the next "crisis". Plus, the only reason everyone is so mad about personal data and fake news is because Trump was elected president. Nobody would really care if Bernie Sanders was our current president.

As for crypto - who knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Most likely, blockchain and cryptocurrencies will be commonplace in the future. But, like most future tech, it's final form will be something very different than we picture today. As an analogy, a young intern I worked with during the original dot com boom could not fathom a world in which Yahoo was not the most dominant tech company out there.

I mean cryptocurrency is not "future tech." It might be obscure to some people, but it's right now tech.

I guess my biggest question is what is the difference between cryptocurrency and something like what @emnofseattledescribes where you have some other form of credits that can be used instead of USD or CAD or even Australian Dollars (poor things). I guess I am not 100% clear on what makes something a currency.

It seems like a Canadian tire money dollar is always worth a Canadian dollar. The value of bitcoin fluctuates relative to other currencies.

I really would not want to invest in a currency controlled by a shady company like Facebook.